Square Routes: Day 8 x 8
Bus 64: Thornton Heath - New Addington Location: London south, outer Length of journey: 8 miles, 30 minutes
...except that 64 is also a cube number as well as a square number. So I took a ride on the 64 and wrote about it last year. The 64 is a fascinating non-tram ride through the outskirts of Croydon, so it's very different to all of this month's previous journeys. Go read it on my Square Routes page. Or just hang around for a new journey to the edge of London tomorrow...
Square Routes: Day 7 x 7
Bus 49: Shepherd's Bush - Clapham Location: London southwest, inner Length of journey: 6 miles, 50 minutes
"We must ask ourselves what the man on the Clapham omnibus would think." (Lord Justice Bowen, 1903)
According to legal counsel, the man on the Clapham omnibus is the 'ordinary, reasonable man', intelligent but non-specialist. So I thought that on this journey I'd look inside the bus for a change, observing "everyman" to see what he was doing and listening in to what he had to say. I was helped in my quest by the 49's on-board camera system which relayed seven different interior shots onto a screen directly in front of me throughout the journey. And I suspect that things have changed somewhat on the Clapham omnibus since 1903.
The man on the Clapham omnibus...
...is wearing a fleece, is listening to music on headphones, has been playing kickabout on Shepherd's Bush Green, is carrying 12 cans of cheap lager in a Morrison's carrier bag, is plugged into his Nokia phone, is young and overweight, is reading a discarded tabloid, is wearing a cheap suit, is "going to meet Dom", is sitting on the back seat with his two hungover mates, says he should have got off at the last stop, is wearing grey sweatpants, is reading a London tourist guide, is accidentally dropping books onto the floor out of a Waterstones bag, is drinking a bottle of Strathmore water, is talking into his mobile in Japanese, hasn't shaved, is probably single, is carrying a manbag, is listening to the women on the Clapham omnibus discussing hair extensions, has big teeth, is eating something that smells like macaroni cheese, is wearing a baseball cap, is breathing out alcohol, has spent £50 at the Virgin megastore in Kensington High Street, is out with his wife, is wearing a scarf, is gossiping in French, is clutching a printed out map, is carrying a green rucksack, is lugging a pushchair on board, has been to the National History Museum with his son, isn't driving a 4x4 like everyone else in Kensington, is sipping a steaming latte, is off to buy antiques in the Kings Road, is bald, is discussing Chelsea Harbour in a loud voice, is drinking Fanta, is carrying a set of golf clubs, is cradling his sleeping girlfriend on his shoulder, is bashing on the ceiling yelling "Last stop, all change".
49 links
• Route 49: anorak-level bus information
• Route 49: anorak-level route information
• Route 49: journey time and connections
• Route 49: timetable
Square Routes: Day 6 x 6
Bus 36: New Cross - Queen's Park Location: London southeast-northwest, inner Length of journey: 9 miles, 65 minutes
And now for something just a little bit special. The 36 is one of London's seven remaining Routemaster routes, or at least it is for the next couple of months. I rode it just in time because on 28th January next year all the Routemasters on route 36 are due to be whisked away and replaced by a fleet of anonymous (but accessible) buses. The accessibility argument is especially weak in this case because the 36 is shadowed along almost all of its route by bendy bus route 436. Given the choice, as far as I could tell, passengers waiting at bus stops were far more likely to board a friendly 36 than an impersonal 436 if both arrived together.
The 36 is the longest of London's remaining Routemaster routes, crossing the capital from southeast to northwest. The route used to be even longer (and there used to be a 36A and 36B too) but the original southern terminus at Hither Green was cut back to Lewisham in 1991 and shorn still further in 1994. The route now begins in New Cross, just along the road from the bus garage, and it was here that I leapt onto the open platform ready to be carried away. The bus headed off on a direct line through South Caribbean London, where fast food shops sell patties instead of burgers and where plantains are ten for a pound. We passed shabby old housing infilled with trendy new apartment blocks, we squeezed through the bustling pedestrianised main shopping street in Peckham and the engine throbbed as we queued to traverse the ancient crossroads at CamberwellGreen.
I was surprised to discover that a TV screen had been placed just above the window at the front of this old Routemaster, broadcasting a diet of adverts, news, adverts, information and more adverts to the captive audience on the upper deck. I watched Michael Palin dash through the Arctic pulled by huskies approximately every ten minutes throughout the journey and I learned that transferring money to Ghana and Cameroon needn't cost the earth with Cashmo. Most eerie of all, however, were the occasional live shots taken by a small black and white camera positioned just above the bus's rear platform. Watching people hopping on and off was like viewing an old sepia film from yesteryear, and a reminder of these buses' long and distinguished heritage.
In Kennington I was treated to a grandstand view of the Oval cricket ground (now the ghastly-named Brit Oval) and of a vast crescent of green plastic seats which next month will be opened as the redeveloped Vauxhall End. We drove on round VauxhallCross, a giant ring road which has been undergoing a radical facelift for what seems like forever. In the centre of the roundabout lay a gleaming new bus station with futuristic steel canopy, but completion was running months behind schedule and, when we passed by, the slip road remained barriered to all traffic. (Update: the bus station opened on Saturday) On our way across Vauxhall Bridge we passed the landmark owl-shaped towers of St George Wharf, while over the river in upmarket Pimlico I spotted "Noel Coward House" (you wouldn't get away with a name like that in South London).
At Victoria the bus's clientele altered - south London disembarked and north London clambered aboard. Two hoodied boys bounded up to the top deck and spent the next 15 minutes discussing PlayStation strategy in white middle-class street patois ("did ya see the boss demon on the next level, well hard he was"). Leaf fall along Grosvenor Place allowed us to see directly into the Queen's back garden (nice tennis courts you have there, Ma'am). Up at Speaker's Corner the audience numbered only six, so there was no need for one over-optimistic orator to have brought a stepladder along with him. And a volley of passengers leapt off the platform at the Royal Oak traffic lights, as if making up for the fact that they won't be able to do so in two months time.
The final leg of the journey headed northwest into inner suburbia, crossing over the main Paddington railway line, beneath the concrete pillars of the A40Westway and above the Grand Union canal. Our bus played leapfrog with another, each taking on passengers at alternate stops as we wended our way through the last few streets of terraced villas. Our destination was a quiet triangle of roads beside Queen's Park station, at which point the conductor babysat the bus for a couple of minutes while the driver popped off to the nearby corner shop. Two Routemaster fans were standing around snapping photos of the doomed buses as each pulled up. I joined them and made three.
36 links
• Route 36: anorak-level bus information
• Route 36: anorak-level route information
• Route 36: journey time and connections
• Route 36: timetable
Square Routes: Day 5 x 5
Bus 25: Ilford - Oxford Circus Location: London east, inner Length of journey: 10 miles, 90 minutes
The 25 is my local bus. It's the only bus that travels up the Mile End Road from Whitechapel to Stratford, and it goes straight past my front door. It is therefore a bus route I know far too much about. The 25 is also a bendy bus route. It's the only bendy bus in east London, and it's always packed, and we local residents hate it. I rode the 25 on its first day of bendiness about six months ago, wrote up my report of the horrors of bendy transformation here, and vowed that I'd never travel the complete route again. So it's that report from June which you'll find on my Square Routes page.
1) You have to buy your ticket before boarding: If you're well off you have a pre-paid Oystercard which makes boarding a bendy bus simple. If you're not well off (and let's remember that the 25 passes through Tower Hamlets, the poorest borough in the country) then you have to buy a ticket with cash before boarding. Transport for London have kindly provided a ticket machine at every bus stop along Route 25, but these are notoriously slow and unreliable. Sometimes the machine takes your money and doesn't dispense a ticket. Sometimes the machine won't even take your money, but the bus driver still won't let you pay on the bus so you're completely stuck. Many's the time I've seen unfortunate local residents still struggling to insert a one pound coin into the machine while the bus driver closes the doors and drives off. And when the cost of a ticket rises in January from £1 (one coin) to £1.20 (two coins), expect things to get worse.
2) You can get on board without paying: Actually that's not quite true. You'd never dream of getting on board without paying because you're an upstanding member of the community, but lots of people aren't. Other people get on board without paying. They just slip onto the bus through its middle or rear doors, smile at saving a quid and slip off again a few miles later. I saw herds of ticket inspectors on the route catching unticketed miscreants during the first week of bendy operation but I've not seen any since.
3) Bendy buses are too long: Bendy buses are 18 metres long, so they take up nearly twice as much road space as the double deckers they replaced. This means that traffic jams are getting longer. Longer buses are also far more likely to stop while blocking road junctions or pedestrian crossings, especially in heavy traffic. There are now two bendy bus routes down Oxford Street, a road which was always notorious for bus congestion, and it's evident that the congestion has got much worse since they were introduced. On the 25, for example, it's now usually quicker to hop off at Tottenham Court Road and walk the last half mile to Oxford Circus.
4) Bendy buses are relatively unmanoeuvrable: London's roads weren't designed for bus juggernauts, and the capital's streets are narrow, twisty and littered with obstructions. A bendy bus trying to change lanes can block the entire road, much to the annoyance of other road users. A bendy bus trying to turn a corner has to drive slowly and carefully, and can knock down street furniture and mow down the odd pedestrian in the process. It's like trying to sail an oil tanker down a narrow river. The western end of route 25 has been particularly affected, because here the bus has to take a five minute diversion down Regent Street and around Hanover Square just to avoid one impossible right turn to reach the last bus stop outside John Lewis.
5) The service on a bendy bus route is less frequent: Because bendy buses hold more people than the buses they replaced, Transport for London have bought less of them and are running them at more widely spaced intervals. TfL would argue that, overall, capacity has increased. I'd argue that I now have to wait longer for a bus. In fact I often have to wait an awful lot longer because these new buses travel bunched-up in convoys, usually with one nigh-empty bus trailing behind one packed-out service, but unable to manoeuvre past and overtake. Here's a photo showing four bendy buses nose to tail beside the Bow flyover, and I'll leave you to imagine the gap in the service that both preceded and followed this procession.
6) There aren't enough seats: Despite being nearly twice as long as the old double deckers, a bendy bus has a third less seats. Think of them more as tube carriages on wheels, with more space to stand and less places to sit. That's fine when there are less than 60 passengers on board because everyone still gets a seat. It's far less good when there are 'up to 140' passengers on board because that's really quite hellish, in the same way that travelling on the Central line in the rush hour is hellish.
7) It's no fun standing on a bendy bus: Unlike trains, London buses do not travel in fairly straight lines. They veer round roundabouts, swerve round corners and stop frequently (and rapidly) at traffic lights. This does not make for a pleasant travelling experience (unless you really enjoy rollercoaster rides, in which case it's a lot cheaper than a trip to Alton Towers). If you do end up standing then the hanging strap things are also really difficult to hang onto. They're not like those nice knobbly things that hang from the ceiling of tube trains, oh no. Instead you get to hang onto a grey plastic loop attached loosely around a high horizontal bar, and this rotates as the bus jerks about. Every time the bus swerves, you swerve. Every time the bus stops, you swing around. Hang onto one of these straps for any length of time and you'll probably do terrible things to your wrist as you jerk around like a demented puppet. I reckon these straps are a real design faux pas and should be replaced immediately.
8) It's really quite dangerous standing on a packed bendy bus: When a bendy bus gets crowded (and the 25 regularly does), tons of people end up standing squashed down the aisles and particularly in the two open spaces beside the middle and rear doors. This is especially dangerous should you end up standing just inside the doorway because the bus designers haven't provided anything suitable to hang onto. There are bars and straps further inside the bus, but you probably won't be able to reach those because other people will be hanging onto them or just standing in front of them and blocking them. All it then takes is one jolt or one fast corner and you're very likely to fall over, or at least smash into the five people attempting to stand next to you.
9) The view isn't very good: I miss the view along route 25 that I used to get from the top deck of the old double deckers. The view from a single decker just isn't the same, not least because a sizeable proportion of the seats face backwards. You'd never choose to view the Christmas lights down Oxford Street, for example, from a bendy bus.
10) Bendy buses are rubbish: They may still be red, but they're just not 'proper' London buses, are they? They're just rubbish.
Square Routes: Day 4 x 4
Bus 16: Cricklewood - Victoria Location: London northwest, inner Length of journey: 6 miles, 65 minutes
My apologies if you live in Cricklewood or Kilburn, but the number 16 bus route isn't exactly a thriller. There may be Marble Arch and Hyde Park Corner to enjoy, but all you see for most of this journey down the A5 arterial road are shops, shops and more shops. Most of them aren't even very exciting shops, just the sort of anonymous retail outlets you'd find along any street just outside any town centre. So I thought that for my account of this journey I'd just list the names of some of the shops I saw from the top deck along the route. There are actually tons more shops than I managed to list, but my pen started running out halfway down Cricklewood Broadway so listing suddenly became an extremely challenging task. But the bus was travelling very slowly in the Saturday afternoon traffic so I did manage to scratch down the names of the following...
Cricklewood Broadway: Lidl, Wickes, Matalan, The Cricklewood, Hammond and Son Butchers, decks.co.uk, Eboneeze health & beauty salon, Curtains Direct, thisisfurniture.com, Sheila's Restaurant and Cafe, Beacon Bingo, M C Clary Coin Op Laundry, Vid Biz, Pound Village, Cricklewood Halal (best meat and grocery), Shannon Dry Cleaners, Walford & Co Solicitors, Bagel Delight Bakery, KFC, Burger King, McDonalds, Iceland, Rupali, Herbal Acupuncture, Pink Rupee Tandoori, American Wheels, Kwik Fit. <there are no shops on Shoot Up Hill> Kilburn High Road: Kilburn Flowers Ltd, Naam Travel, Pandora's Box 2nd Hand Shop, North London Tavern, The Kebabish, All Cash Amusements, Small & Beautiful Restaurant, Food City, NYC Hip Hop Clothing, Poolcrest Snooker Centre, Call The World For Less, Tricycle Theatre, Planet Pizza, Woody Grill, Nail Art, Classy Chicks, Poundstretcher, H Samuel, Benny Dee Clothing, Woolworths, Greggs, Brent Textiles Ltd, Purple and Pink, Dumpling Chinese Restaurant. <there are no shops on Maida Vale> Edgware Road: Remedys Pharmacy, Threshers, Café La Marquise, Al Sutan Supermarket, Kandoo Persian restaurant, Zorba Fish Restaurant, Al Kanater (Lebanese cuisine), Caesar Ceramics, Video Prince, Micro-logic.com, Fatoush, Gulf Telecom, Grosvenor Victoria Casino, Shazia Food Hall, Woolworths, Al Mustafa, Beirut Express, Maroush Deli, Kiddy Boom, Starbucks, the Tyburn Bar, Odeon Marble Arch, Sainsbury's Local, Pret, Chequepoint bureau de change. Park Lane: MG Rover, Stratstone Aston Martin showroom, BMW Park Lane, Porsche, London Hilton. <there are no shops on Grosvenor Place> Victoria: The Beresford Clinic, Brava! Lingerie, Balls Brothers, H Stain Jewellers, The Shakespeare, Victoria Cafe.
16 links
• Route 16: anorak-level bus information
• Route 16: anorak-level route information
• Route 16: journey time and connections
• Route 16: timetable
Square Routes: Day 3 x 3
Bus 9: Aldwych - Hammersmith Location: London west, inner Length of journey: 5 miles, 40 minutes
I made this journey three months too late. Back at the start of September this was a Routemaster route, but alas the new replacement boxy double deckers make the number 9 now as anonymous a route as almost any other. Shame. My third square route was a relatively-brief jaunt from the West End to West London, beginning almost directly outside the boarded-up entrance to another long lost transport legend - the disused underground station at Aldwych (deceased 1994). King's College nextdoor is much older, 175 years old this year, but still very much functional.
My journey would have been much more pleasant in a Routemaster. Just one stop down the Strand we had to wait for two minutes while a balding Japanese man battled to find change and then feed it into the ticket machine beside the bus stop. Actually we didn't have to wait - our driver was just being kind - but this delay would never have happened with an on-board conductor to sort everything out. My grandstand view of Nelson's Column would also have been considerably better had I not been sitting on a stiff plastic seat of the kind you'd expect to find in a cheap cafeteria. Still, such is progress.
Apart from TrafalgarSquare, route 9 has much to recommend it to the tourist. This might explain why five tourists crammed into the three seats next to me at the front of the top deck for most of the journey. They ooh-ed at Admiralty Arch, they ahh-ed at Piccadilly Circus and they prodded furiously in the general direction of the Ritz. I could have told them everything there is to know about Piccadilly as we sped down the bus lane there, but instead I chose to keep quiet. Knightsbridge was a bit of an ugly disappointment, although the retail cathedral of Harvey Nicks definitely caught their eye. They strained in vain to spot Princess Di'sfountain through the trees in Hyde Park as we passed close by, then disembarked rapidly when we reached the Royal Albert Hall. I'd like to think that this was for cultural reasons but I suspect it was more likely they just wanted to take each other's photos beneath the gaudy gold of the Albert Memorial.
Just before we reached Hammersmith, a sad sight caught my eye at the end of Kensington High Street. Here stands the CommonwealthInstitute, a low concrete building with a curved green copper roof which for 40 years promoted cultural diversity to an under-enlightened nation. I remember being taken round the exhibition halls as a child and seeing strange African masks from distant lands that Britain had only just realised it didn't rule any more. Alas the building now lies empty, having been closed to the public two years ago by its somewhat suspect board of trustees. A number of Commonwealth leaders support the idea that the Institute should be knocked down and the money from the sale of the land used to fund schooling for disadvantaged children. No doubt property speculators are licking their lips at the prospect, but I would be saddened if this slice of post-imperial heritage were to be replaced by 'Tanzania Court' and 'Lesotho Villas' (1 and 2 bedroom apartments available). As my number 9 journey had shown, the past is always in danger of being lost forever.
Square Routes: Day 2 x 2
Bus 4: Waterloo - Archway Location: London north, inner Length of journey: 8 miles, 55 minutes
From Waterloo you can catch the Eurostar to Paris and Brussels, or you can catch the number 4 bus to Finsbury Park and Archway. It's a tough choice, but I took the latter option. Waterloo station is so big that it took me a good ten minutes to find the right bus stop from which to begin my journey, out beside the rumbling Waterloo Road. An endless stream of red double deckers navigated down the street, pulling in to pick off passengers from the harbour of their bus shelter. I waited ages 4 my chosen vessel to arrive. We sailed off round IMAX Island, then steamed ahead across Waterloo Bridge. The view to port and starboard along the river from my lookout in the crow's nest was picture perfect.
The bus skirted Aldwych, passing a cluster of dossers drinking out of brown paper bags. We entered the City at the original site of Temple Bar and descended Fleet Street, now a mere shadow of its former journalistic self. I was surprised to see that the only publishers remaining in the street are Kall Kwik (based, believe it or not, in the very shop where Sweeney Todd once used to slice and dice his unshaven victims). Up Ludgate Hill we just caught a glimpse of Temple Bar in its new setting, lost in the scaffolding and redevelopment around St Paul's Cathedral. Herds of open-topped sightseeing buses passed us by, and tourists stared into our ordinary top deck as though we were sights ourselves. A few minutes later we exited the City past the giant concrete blocks of the Barbican, its flowerboxes arranged in regular tiers like some multi-coloured waterfall.
As soon as we drove north of the City our view immediately changed. The backroads of Islington (officially the very southern end of the A1 trunk road) weren't quite so wealthy, or quite so photogenic. There were a couple of exceptions - notably Upper Street (a buzzy place to whine and dine) - but either side we were suddenly reminded that real people live in London and that not all of them can afford the antiques being sold up the road. Life looked at its grimmest around Finsbury Park, although the road here did boast a view of London's finest footballstadium - as well as the Arsenal Fish Bar, the Arsenal Cafe, the Arsenal Supermarket, the Arsenal Barbers, the Arsenal Tavern and The Gunners (another pub, of course).
By the time we reached the Holloway Road our driver appeared to be trying very hard not to stop, but he was thwarted by passengers who kept trying to flag the bus down. He paused briefly along a residential avenue in Tufnell Park to let on board a mad lady and her two contrasting dogs. Mrs Mad charged up to the top deck where she let both her smelly alsatian and small yappy mongrel off their leads and let them both roam free. Then she spent the rest of the journey talking to both of her canine companions. I'm sure that repeatedly gurgling "Ooh you're so big, you're so big" is normal behaviour for a pet owner behind closed doors, but her unhinged utterances felt extremely uncomfortable on board public transport. On reaching our final destination at Archway Mrs Mad then yelled loudly at the driver to open the doors and let her menagerie disembark which, after a short delay for effect, he was only too pleased to do. I followed a safe distance after.
4 links
• Route 4: anorak-level route information
• Route 4: journey time and connections
• Route 4: timetable
• Huge petition against appalling service on route 4
It's time once again for diamond geezer to spend a few days exploring London by bus. I thought I'd get out and view some more of the capital from the best vantage point of all, the top deck of a London bus. And then I'd come back and tell you all about what I saw. Just like I did this time last year.
Last year I travelled on seven buses whose route numbers were cube numbers. This year I've decided to switch my mathematical allegiance to square numbers. (1x1, 2x2, 3x3 and so on.) Square routes. I'm only going up as far as 10x10 because the journeys get a little too suburban after that, but the first ten square routes are fascinating enough. Oystercards at the ready - hold very tight please.
Square Routes: Day 1 x 1
Bus 1: Centre Point - Canada Water Location: London southeast, inner Length of journey: 6 miles, 35 minutes
...except that 1 is a cube number as well as a square number, which means that I made this particular journey last year. You can re-read my account of bus route 1 here. Or you can wait for the first new journey tomorrow.
The Top 10 reasons why Top of the Pops used to be better (following the news that TotP is to be relegated to Sunday teatime on BBC2 early next year)
[10] The pop chart used to be released on a Tuesday lunchtime. If you missed it on the radio there was no internet or Ceefax to help you to catch up, there was just the chart rundown on Top of the Pops two days later. So everybody watched, just to see who was Number One, what they looked like and whether they could mime or not. Today's records (and videos and pop charts) are over-exposed. [9] The whole family used to be able to watch TotP. Your dad could enjoy Pan's People, your mum could ask you what that terrible racket was, your gran could wait for Barry Manilow to appear and you could thrill to the live performance of some top secret new band that only you and a million other teenagers knew about. Nowadays your dad watches for Fearne Cotton, your mum watches for Ronan Keating, your gran is watching ITV and you're out having a life. [8] Andi Peters should still be watching the show, not producing it. [7] TotP went downhill as soon as they stopped letting Radio 1 DJs present the show. These DJs may generally have been idiots but at least they had screen presence. Compare Jimmy Saville, DLT and JohnPeel&KidJensen to whoever the anonymous grinners are who compere the show these days. No contest. [6] TotP's true home is on Thursday night, not Friday night. When Top of the Pops was on a Thursday night, the following morning every school playground in the country would be buzzing with chatter about who'd been on, what they'd sung and what they were wearing. Once TotP shifted to a Friday night there was nobody left to share your opinions with the following morning, and the 'must see' televisual event of the week died. [5] No programme, however successful, can compete against Coronation Street. Once TotP was moved to the deathslot opposite Vera Duckworth then its days at the top were numbered. Next year's move to Sunday teatime will instead pitch Top of the Pops against Last of the Summer Wine and Songs of Praise. Still doomed then. [4] TotP is a show about singles. Alas, the single is dead (or at least fatally wounded) and nobody has ever successfully produced a show called Top of the Albums (imagine the Cullum/Twain/Anastacia hell of it all). [3] TotP used to only play records that were climbing the chart (or at least not falling). If you fell, you weren't on. If you hadn't released your record yet, you weren't on. It was a simple but brutal format, and if that meant watching the Smurfs followed by the Boomtown Rats followed by James Galway then so be it. This worked because the British public picked the playlist, not the producer. Nowadays the producer picks the playlist weeks in advance, and quite frankly we don't care who he picks any more. [2] The most important part of TotP should be the music, not all the peripheral fluff that's grown to smother the show over the last decade. We don't care if Britney is on tour in Las Vegas, or what Geri Halliwell's favourite colour is. We can get enough of that crap on Saturday mornings thankyou. We just want the music. [1] Pop music is no longer the shared consciousness of the nation. 30 years ago everybody knew who David Essex was and could sing along to his Number One hit Gonna Make You A Star. No so today's bland chart-toppers. Our record industry has fractured to the point where audiences prefer to watch one of 50 separate digital video channels rather than one all-encompassing half hour show. Pops used to be short for Popular, and nothing is any more.
The London Marathon always takes place on a spring morning in full daylight, usually in pleasant mild conditions. Not so RunLondon, which the marketing people at Nike this year scheduled for a late autumn evening in complete darkness. They branded the race Go Nocturnal, they dressed all 30000 athletes in fluorescent yellow jerseys and they set them running 10km around the streets of Southwark in temperatures notionally above freezing. Running's good for you, apparently, but last night I was glad I was only watching.
Swarms of dayglo competitors emerged from Canada Water tube station throughout the early evening, all heading for the mass start by Surrey Quays Shopping Centre. There were no pantomime cow outfits or people with purple hair dressed as fairies because this was a serious fun run. Five 'waves' of runners departed at half hour intervals, with Paula Radcliffe and friends in the first wave and the slower runners in the fifth. The start of each wave was preceded by a 10 minute mass warm-up, with some demented fitness trainer yelling "Are you ready?" from a big yellow stage to the flock of eager disciples spread out before him. The crowd raised their hands, flexed their calf muscles and then shuffled slowly down to the start where it took a good seven minutes to get everybody through.
This wasn't the most glamorous of routes. The streets of Rotherhithe are not renowned for their beauty, neither is Jamaica Road through Bermondsey a hotbed of attractive architecture. Thankfully the darkness covered up these visual weaknesses perfectly. The view improved somewhat around the halfway mark with a jog along the riverbank past City Hall, although I'm told the narrow streets through Shad Thames weren't exactly perfect for a mass running event. The most impressive section was undoubtedly over Tower Bridge, with streams of yellow athletes crossing to the north side before doubling back to return to Bermondsey for the muscle-sapping final leg. A sneaky footbridge placed a few hundred yards before the finish in Southwark Park convinced many that the end of the race was nigh. They used up their last reserves of strength in sprinting to the bridge, only to discover that the finishing line remained tantalisingly out of reach.
Southwark Park then took on the look of a surreal alien landscape as thousands of runners emerged from the finish funnel wrapped in silver foil. They glinted en masse in the darkness, panting but happy, and stumbled through the poorly-lit mud to try to find their friends in the mêlée. There were times to compare, medals to clutch and warm clothes to put on, and then a journey home to be made before leg muscles started to seize up. I got home at the same time as my yellow-jerseyed next-door neighbour, which was a good excuse to talk to her for the very first time. Well done to her, and to everyoneelse who ran London. Daylight would be preferable next time though, please.
I've been practising spending money. How am I doing?
i) My passport expires in January, so I thought I'd better renew it before George Bush introduces any newlaws forcing me to slice off my fingertips and staple them to the back page. It's surprisingly easy to renew your passport online (you fill in your details and they send you a completed form to sign) but one thing never changes - the dreaded trip to the photo booth. These evil machines have become rather more modern than I remember 10 years ago, so the one I visited took my photo digitally without flashing which was a bit unnerving. It also spoke, which meant that everyone queueing outside the booth could hear me reject the first three attempted photos in favour of the fourth. I'm not chuffed with the resulting image, but at least I only have to show it to the occasional immigration officer over the next decade.
cost: £45 (passport renewal) + £4 (passport photo)
verdict: Essential (and a bargain at less than a fiver a year)
ii) Last week my old ITVDigital box started playing up, switching itself off at unexpected intervals, so I've been out buying myself a Freeview replacement. The old box only lasted three years but hey, that's longer than ITV Digital managed. My new box is a Sony VTX-D800U, a sleek little silver number which, by carefully plying the Aladdin's Caves of Tottenham Court Road, I've managed to acquire for rather less than the recommended price of £99. It may be top-of-the-range but it can't counteract my flat's appalling TV reception so I'm still left without ITV and Channel 4, and with certain other channels all blotchy and virtually unwatchable. QVC and bid.up-tv, alas, are crystal clear.
cost: £85 (fourteen quid off)
verdict: Pretty much essential (and impressive haggling)
iii) The only decent compilation album out this Christmas is UltimateKylie. Disc 1 covers the Stock, Aitken and Waterman years, while disc 2 chronicles the deConstruction interregnum and the subsequent Parlophone renaissance. Very few pop careers contain quite so many standout singles (the fab:dross ratio is very high) so I couldn't resist buying the album when I saw it in Woolworths yesterday for £3 off. And then, when I got home, I checked how many of these 33 tracks I already owned and it was nigh all of them. I could have burnt my own Kylie compilation for free and replaced "Especially For You" with "Your Disco Needs You" into the bargain, but I didn't. Have I got the hang of consumption yet?
cost: £12.99 (the same as Amazon, but without the delivery charge)
verdict: An absolutely lovely waste of money
Screen 1: The Incredibles Plot: a family of former superheroes is forced to break cover to protect the world from an evil genius, and everyone becomes less superficial along the way. I'd read a lot of superlatives over the information superhighway about this new Pixar movie, and I was ready to be disappointed. But no, this is two hours of superior entertainment. The animation is superb and the scriptwriter is a superstar. There are many creative layers superimposed here, from James Bond to Superman, and there's barely a superfluous scene. Cartoons used to only be for kids, but that rule has now been superseded. Super.
BowRoadupdate: It's becoming disturbingly clear what the modernisation of Bow Road station actually involves, and it's not renovation. The most visible change in recent weeks has been a proliferation of cables - along the platforms, up the stairs, across the ticket hall - everywhere. They're especially ugly cables, attached to walls by particularly ugly cable brackets, and they're doing nothing for the Victorian heritage of the station. I had been wondering what all these cables could possibly be for, but the answer has come in the form of short swatches of silver tape plastered all over the stairs and ticket hall, each with some special code scribbled on in biro. Some codes indicate new lighting (Light fitting above) and some indicate new electrical equipment (Unswitched fuse for V.E.I.D) but a surprisingly large number foretell the installation of new cameras. And lots of them.
According to the stickers Cam 14 is going at the foot of the eastbound stairwell, Cam 13 halfway up, Cam 12 round the corner at the top of the stairs and Cam 11 and Cam 10 together a few steps further along at the entrance to the ticket hall. Why one stairwell needs five cameras to watch over it is beyond me. If the dozy mare who sits in the booth by the ticket barrier looked up from reading her Metro occasionally, like when yet another teenager is escaping through the luggage gate without paying, we wouldn't need half as many cameras.
Most worrying of all, however, is the sticker at the foot of the westbound stairwell which reads CCTV Camera 43. It appears that tube bosses plan to install at least 43 cameras at this station! What the hell for? It's not an especially big station, but some safety bigwig appears to think that no corner of this station can possibly remain unsnooped. It's not an especially busy station either, with an average of just 5500 users each day, but it looks as though there's going to be at least one camera for every 125 passengers. What an incredible waste of money. This looks like tube surveillance overkill to me, organised by some profligate underground Big Brother figure. Sorry, but I don't feel any safer just because the station supervisor can sit in her new office and flick between 43 different video shots of me walking around her empty platforms. I'd just like some money to be spent on a decent functional station with a lick of paint and a 'next train' indicator that's less than 40 years old, please. Some time in the next four months would be nice.
75 things to do on an inter-city train: climb aboard, find an empty seat, hog a four-seat table, ignore a reservation, block the gangway with your wheelie suitcase, fill the luggage rack, wipe the crumbs off your seat, stake out territory by spreading out your belongings, listen to endless announcements about the buffet car, ignore safety information, get out your thermos and sarnies, try desperately to find your ticket when the inspector approaches, ignore the passing drinks trolley, stand too close to the automatic sliding door, overtake lorries, cross water, speed through farmland, stare at cows, glance at horses, wave at sheep, sit for ages in a cutting, enjoy the view from an embankment, try to peer at other people's laptops, grimace at the behaviour of other people's children, grimace at the behaviour of your own children, listen in on other people's conversations, try not to listen in on other people's conversations, escape into your walkman, spot trains, spot trainspotters, pop your ears as you whizz through a tunnel, go to the buffet car, walk faster than the train, buy an overpriced bacon sandwich, walk slower than the train, try to walk in a straight line, spill your drink, squeeze past people people walking the other way, sneak into first class, watch your mobile phone reception fluctuate, listen to other people's ringtones, answer your mobile by saying "I'm on a train", scrutinise other people's gardens, spot houses that look nicer than your own, try to read the passing station names to work out where you are, stare at distant mist, birdwatch, squint into the sun, detect changes in the weather, check your watch, read the paper, re-read the paper, read the complimentary in-house magazine, read other people's newspapers, stretch, relax, yawn, sleep, wait for the toilet to become vacant, piss into the toilet bowl at an awkward angle, try to wash your hands without touching the tap, gawp at endless fields, pass light industrial units, trace the path of pylons, compare towns, watch Britain go by, learn geography, start packing up five minutes before reaching your destination, stand up two minutes before reaching your destination, queue by the exits, lower the window, turn the door handle, step out onto the platform, catch the replacement bus service.
X-30
Spot the Xmas TV Movie Classic(updated)
• Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (Christmas Eve, ITV1, 12.50pm)
• White Christmas (Christmas Day, BBC2, 2.10pm)
• Gone With The Wind (Christmas Day, ITV1, 12.45am)
• Mary Poppins (Boxing Day, ITV1, 10.50am)
• The Wizard Of Oz (Boxing Day, five, 4.25pm)
• The Sound Of Music (29 December, BBC1, 2.45pm)
Square Routes: Day 8 x 8
The man on the Clapham omnibus...
And now for something just a little bit special. The 36 is one of London's seven remaining Routemaster routes, or at least it is for the next couple of months. I rode it just in time because on 28th January next year all the Routemasters on route 36 are due to be whisked away and replaced by a fleet of anonymous (but accessible) buses. The accessibility argument is especially weak in this case because the 36 is shadowed along almost all of its route by bendy bus route 436. Given the choice, as far as I could tell, passengers waiting at bus stops were far more likely to board a friendly 36 than an impersonal 436 if both arrived together.
I was surprised to discover that a TV screen had been placed just above the window at the front of this old Routemaster, broadcasting a diet of adverts, news, adverts, information and more adverts to the captive audience on the upper deck. I watched Michael Palin dash through the Arctic pulled by huskies approximately every ten minutes throughout the journey and I learned that transferring money to Ghana and Cameroon needn't cost the earth with Cashmo. Most eerie of all, however, were the occasional live shots taken by a small black and white camera positioned just above the bus's rear platform. Watching people hopping on and off was like viewing an old sepia film from yesteryear, and a reminder of these buses' long and distinguished heritage.
At Victoria the bus's clientele altered - south London disembarked and north London clambered aboard. Two hoodied boys bounded up to the top deck and spent the next 15 minutes discussing PlayStation strategy in white middle-class street patois ("did ya see the boss demon on the next level, well hard he was"). Leaf fall along Grosvenor Place allowed us to see directly into the Queen's back garden (nice tennis courts you have there, Ma'am). Up at Speaker's Corner the audience numbered only six, so there was no need for one over-optimistic orator to have brought a stepladder along with him. And a volley of passengers leapt off the platform at the Royal Oak traffic lights, as if making up for the fact that they won't be able to do so in two months time.
The 25 is my local bus. It's the only bus that travels up the Mile End Road from Whitechapel to Stratford, and it goes straight past my front door. It is therefore a bus route I know far too much about. The 25 is also a bendy bus route. It's the only bendy bus in east London, and it's always packed, and we local residents hate it. I rode the 25 on its first day of bendiness about six months ago, wrote up my report of the horrors of bendy transformation here, and vowed that I'd never travel the complete route again. So it's that report from June which you'll find on my Square Routes page.
My apologies if you live in Cricklewood or Kilburn, but the number 16 bus route isn't exactly a thriller. There may be Marble Arch and Hyde Park Corner to enjoy, but all you see for most of this journey down the A5 arterial road are shops, shops and more shops. Most of them aren't even very exciting shops, just the sort of anonymous retail outlets you'd find along any street just outside any town centre. So I thought that for my account of this journey I'd just list the names of some of the shops I saw from the top deck along the route. There are actually tons more shops than I managed to list, but my pen started running out halfway down Cricklewood Broadway so listing suddenly became an extremely challenging task. But the bus was travelling very slowly in the Saturday afternoon traffic so I did manage to scratch down the names of the following...
I made this journey three months too late. Back at the start of September this was a Routemaster route, but alas the new replacement boxy double deckers make the number 9 now as anonymous a route as almost any other. Shame. My third square route was a relatively-brief jaunt from the West End to West London, beginning almost directly outside the boarded-up entrance to another long lost transport legend - the disused underground station at Aldwych (deceased 1994). King's College nextdoor is much older, 175 years old this year, but still very much functional.
My journey would have been much more pleasant in a Routemaster. Just one stop down the Strand we had to wait for two minutes while a balding Japanese man battled to find change and then feed it into the ticket machine beside the bus stop. Actually we didn't have to wait - our driver was just being kind - but this delay would never have happened with an on-board conductor to sort everything out. My grandstand view of Nelson's Column would also have been considerably better had I not been sitting on a stiff plastic seat of the kind you'd expect to find in a cheap cafeteria. Still, such is progress.
From Waterloo you can catch the Eurostar to Paris and Brussels, or you can catch the number 4 bus to Finsbury Park and Archway. It's a tough choice, but I took the latter option. Waterloo station is so big that it took me a good ten minutes to find the right bus stop from which to begin my journey, out beside the rumbling Waterloo Road. An endless stream of red double deckers navigated down the street, pulling in to pick off passengers from the harbour of their bus shelter. I waited ages 4 my chosen vessel to arrive. We sailed off round IMAX Island, then steamed ahead across Waterloo Bridge. The view to port and starboard along the river from my lookout in the crow's nest was picture perfect.
As soon as we drove north of the City our view immediately changed. The backroads of Islington (officially the very southern end of the A1 trunk road) weren't quite so wealthy, or quite so photogenic. There were a couple of exceptions - notably Upper Street (a buzzy place to whine and dine) - but either side we were suddenly reminded that real people live in London and that not all of them can afford the antiques being sold up the road. Life looked at its grimmest around Finsbury Park, although the road here did boast a view of London's finest football stadium - as well as the Arsenal Fish Bar, the Arsenal Cafe, the Arsenal Supermarket, the Arsenal Barbers, the Arsenal Tavern and The Gunners (another pub, of course).
X-24
The London Marathon always takes place on a spring morning in full daylight, usually in pleasant mild conditions. Not so RunLondon, which the marketing people at Nike this year scheduled for a late autumn evening in complete darkness. They branded the race Go Nocturnal, they dressed all 30000 athletes in fluorescent yellow jerseys and they set them running 10km around the streets of Southwark in temperatures notionally above freezing. Running's good for you, apparently, but last night I was glad I was only watching.
Bow Road update: It's becoming disturbingly clear what the modernisation of Bow Road station actually involves, and it's not renovation. The most visible change in recent weeks has been a proliferation of cables - along the platforms, up the stairs, across the ticket hall - everywhere. They're especially ugly cables, attached to walls by particularly ugly cable brackets, and they're doing nothing for the Victorian heritage of the station. I had been wondering what all these cables could possibly be for, but the answer has come in the form of short swatches of silver tape plastered all over the stairs and ticket hall, each with some special code scribbled on in biro. Some codes indicate new lighting (Light fitting above) and some indicate new electrical equipment (Unswitched fuse for V.E.I.D) but a surprisingly large number foretell the installation of new cameras. And lots of them.
Most worrying of all, however, is the sticker at the foot of the westbound stairwell which reads CCTV Camera 43. It appears that tube bosses plan to install at least 43 cameras at this station! What the hell for? It's not an especially big station, but some safety bigwig appears to think that no corner of this station can possibly remain unsnooped. It's not an especially busy station either, with an average of just 5500 users each day, but it looks as though there's going to be at least one camera for every 125 passengers. What an incredible waste of money. This looks like tube surveillance overkill to me, organised by some profligate underground Big Brother figure. Sorry, but I don't feel any safer just because the station supervisor can sit in her new office and flick between 43 different video shots of me walking around her empty platforms. I'd just like some money to be spent on a decent functional station with a lick of paint and a 'next train' indicator that's less than 40 years old, please. Some time in the next four months would be nice.
